Monday 19 March 2012 17.01 EDT
First published on Monday 19 March 2012 17.01 EDT

Just before 8am, Ethel Guedj dropped off two of her sons, aged 15 and 11, at the Ozar Hatorah private Jewish secondary school in a quiet residential street of north east Toulouse. As usual, there were young children milling in front of the gates, waiting to be taken to the nearby primary school.

Guedj's sons followed other teenagers into morning prayers and had barely put down their briefcases when they heard shots ring out.

A gunman had pulled up on an expensive motorbike with a big engine, dismounted and pulled out two high-calibre handguns. He fired at "everything in front of him, children and adults," the state prosecutor said.

He shot dead Jonathan Sandler, a 30-year-old French-Israeli rabbi who had recently joined the staff to teach Yiddish, and Sandler's two sons, aged six and three. Then he stepped over the bodies and chased children into the school courtyard where witnesses said he pursued a child, the eight-year-old daughter of the principal, grabbed her by the hair, pulled her to him and shot her at close range.

"My sons saw the bodies, there was blood everywhere," said Guedj as she stood crying, face contorted in horror, outside the school. "My son was saying, 'We were praying, Mum, but our prayers didn't work'. "

France is in a state of shock and revulsion after the rabbi and three children were killed in the most brutal attack on the French Jewish community in decades, which also left another 17-year-old boy fighting for his life in hospital.

The mood, described as "blind panic" by one witness to the shootings, is heightened by a fear that France has been struck by a serial killer on the loose who is targeting minorities.

Three soldiers were killed, including two Muslims, and another is in a critical condition after the gunman opened fire on a soldier in Toulouse eight days ago and then targeted three paratroopers at a cashpoint in the nearby town of Montauban on Thursday.

"Everything leads one to believe that these were racist and antisemitic acts," said the mayor of Toulouse, Pierre Cohen.

Outside the school on a quiet street with pastel houses and wooden shutters and the first blossom of spring on the trees, one mother of two described a "psychosis of fear" as numbered bullet-holes were highlighted in the school's aluminium fence. She said: "Toulouse has been shut down. What if the attacker is hiding in the area?" There were demonstrations and vigils in Paris and Toulouse on Monday night to mourn the dead.

Speculation was rife as to what type of person the killer is. The news weekly Le Point said that one line of inquiry was to examine former paratroopers who had been expelled from their regiment in the area in 2008 for neo-nazi behaviour. Authorities did not immediately comment on the report.

A 29-year-old classroom assistant who gave his name as Baroukh said: "When we heard the shots we ran with the children through an emergency exit into the basement to hide. The gunman fired again at the bodies on the ground, he hit some twice." Children described how they whispered and prayed, hiding in the basement, unsure if the gunman was still in the school.

Simon Mana, 20, a former pupil who now works as a classroom assistant, said he heard the shots and arrived at the school as the children's bodies were being covered with sheets. "It was total panic. Children were crying and jumping into my arms. Just days before I had been hugging the children who died. We're lost, everyone is lost, totally lost and in shock."

The shootings led politicians to immediately suspend all campaigning in the presidential election, being held on 22 April and 6 May, as some speculated what effect the attack could have on a campaign battle where issues of religion, ethnic minorities and national identity had featured strongly, and the right had been accused of stoking tensions by forcing the marginal topic of halal meat and religious slaughter into the centre of the election debate.

President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to the school, calling it a day of national tragedy. He said: "Barbarity, savagery, cruelty cannot win. Hate cannot win."

The Socialist presidential frontrunner, François Hollande also visited the school to condemn the "terrible, horrible drama" and call on France to unite.

One 48-year-old father who lived near the school felt the shooting would heighten the mood of worry and fear around this "already very emotional election campaign."

In 2002, a brutal attack on a pensioner shortly before the first-round presidential vote pushed crime and security issues on to the agenda and was felt to have contributed to the shock elimination of the Socialist candidate, beaten by the extreme right Front National's Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Toulouse has one of the largest Jewish communities in France, well-integrated and mainly of north African heritage, and France has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in western Europe, estimated at about 500,000 and five million respectively.

Sarkozy ordered increased security at Jewish and Muslim buildings around Toulouse, while his prime minister, François Fillon, told officials to secure all school and religious buildings in the entire country.

"Just because we are different doesn't mean we should be killed," said one father in tears outside the school.

Sandrine Roix, a local mother of two who knew children at the school said: "The mood is shock and fear. Everyone looking around for the motorbike. This must have been a fanatic, someone who's ill. Everyone is afraid. It takes madness to do this, but will he be caught or strike again? People like this are uncontrollable."

Several witness said the gunman kept his motorcycle helmet on during the attack. But one mother, whose son witnessed the attack and was still reeling in shock, said he had stared directly at the children with "clear, green eyes".